I just watched The Dark Knight.
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Wondering about stuff

You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment - Anne Dillard.

Anne Dillard is an American writer. This is the first time that I had heard of her, when I came across the above quote in this blog entry about how to write well.

Here are a few things that have made me wonder recently. Not astonished or feeling the sense of wonder that any SF reader would feel, but plain wondering about something. I feel that Anne Dillard meant it in the former sense.

• The paper coffee cups in my office have the following printed on the bottom - 'Empty Cup' manufactured by 'Imaginative Flexipacks Ltd, New Delhi'. Why make it explicit that the contents of the cup are not the cup maker's responsibility? So that no liabilities arise for him if the content in the cup is undrinkable? But what if hot coffee spills on your lap - whose fault is it then, yours or 'Imaginative Flexipacks' for not making the cup spill proof?
  

• I got a Holi ecard from a person whose acquaintance I had made over the internet some weeks back. He happens to be a good science fiction writer, among other things. The text on the ecard was this -
  
  May your life be coloured with the colours of joy, friendship, fun, love and happiness.
  

Its true not only for this card, but when you read these words after removing all biases like 'Yes I've seen this before, its a cliche', and really see what the words mean, its a completely different and wonderful realization. No I am not getting old and sentimental.

• Nicholas Boothman, in his book How to Make People like you in 90 Seconds or Less, says that parents the world over hold their child in the same position - on the crook of their left arm, and the right hand covering the child, holding it close to one's heart, which is supposedly on the left side of the body. I wonder what left handed parents do?

Indian SF stories

Dr. Arvind Mishra writes about the first SF stories in India.

It would be a good idea to construct a timeline for this subject. A database that would have a comprehensive list of such stories in regional Indian languages for those early years. Articles get published every now and then on this - it would be great if the data in them could be aggregated.

The Man from Earth

Why is the movie 'The Man from Earth' named liked it is? If you can figure it out after watching it you are smarter than I am.

It is about a university professor who claims to be 14000 years old, practically immortal. The movie picks up when he's about to leave his job for another so that people don't start wondering why he does not grow old. The rest of the movie is made up of the conversation between him and his colleagues at his farewell party.

There is no passion, no great revelations, a cliched view of world history, a single attempt at jolting Christian audiences. It's a very short movie. Not in length but in content. Minimalist is the word.

I liked K-Pax better. If you're thinking what these two movies have in common, it's the nature of the ending.

Book Fair acquisitions

Picked up the following at the annual Hyderabad Book Fair -

• The Penguin History of Early India - Romila Thapar
  
• Indian Muslims - Where have they gone wrong? - Rafiq Zakaria
• Godel, Escher, Bach - Douglas Hofstadter
• Mostly Magic - A collection of children's stories - yet another of those books which you have to buy just because they are so beautifully made.
• Batman - Knightfall - Dennis O'Neil
• The John Varley Reader
• DAW 30th Anniversary Science Fiction anthology
• Early Novels in India - Meenakshi Mukherjee
• Intersections - The Sycamore Hill (SF) Anthology
• The Martian Tales Trilogy - Edgar Rice Burroughs
• The Mind Map Book - Tom and Barry Buzan
• Asimov's New Guide to Science
• India : Historical Beginnings and the Concept of the Aryan
• India by Al-Biruni - Ed Qeyamuddin Ahmed

Fruitful visits, I would say :D.